Four members of the Bundestag, the German parliament, have been banned from an ongoing session after waving a large Palestinian flag.
The four MPs with Die Linke, Vizenz Glaser, Cansin Köktürk, Charlotte Neuhäuser and Lisa Schubert, rose from their places during a speech by Stephan Mayer, member of the parliament’s foreign policy committee, on September 24 and started waving the flag from their bench.
The parliament Vice President, Josephine Ortleb (Social Democratic Party, SDP) intervened and asked them to stop or leave the room. They did not react.
“You are leaving this room now,” Ortleb then ordered and told parliamentary ushers to remove the flag. She also banned a photographer on the visitor gallery, who had been taken pictures of the disturbance.
The four left-wingers left the room and were excluded from all further sessions that day.
Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (Christian Democratic Union) later defended the ban, telling her fellow MPs: “Those who need posters and flags can show them on the street.”
In case of further rules violations she threatened the left-wingers with a longer ban from parliamentary sessions and monetary fines.
The banned MPs later defended their protest.
Glaser said: “The catastrophic situation in Gaza leaves us no choice but to pull out all the stops to draw attention to the issue.”
Köktürk wrote on Instagram: “Germany is complicit in this genocide in Gaza. Apparently, we still need to remind them of that.
“Take responsibility at last! See you on the streets on Saturday.” She was referring to a large-scale protest planned for tomorrow in Berlin, with support from Die Linke.
Köktürk, who only became an MP this year, is already a repeat offender. She has disturbed parliamentary sessions multiple times with her solidarity expressions for Palestine – in violation of the house rules.
At the inaugural session of the new Bundestag in March, she posed with a Keffiyeh, the headdress popular with Palestinians, including terrorists. In June, she was barred from a parliamentary session for refusing to take off a T-shirt with the slogan “Palestine” on it.
Die Linke is actively pandering to Germany’s growing Muslim voter base and seven out of its 64 MPs are Muslim.
According to a survey by news station ZDF, 29 per cent of Muslim voters backed the party in the latest general election – making it the most popular with Muslims ahead of the SDP with 28 per cent.
